Attempts afoot to make ICT first-ever trans-inclusive city

Activist says campaign aimed at providing equal rights to the transgender community

ISLAMABAD:

Transgender rights activist Professor Nayab Ali has said that a special campaign has been started to make the federal capital the country’s first-ever “Transgender Inclusive City (TIC,)”.

She said on Sunday that the campaign was aimed to provide equal rights to the transgender community in the city, adding that the resistance to such formal regulatory inclusion also provided an opportunity to combat the many ways our society is structured to functionally deny many trans youth equal access to not just medical care and sports participation, but live equally.

Read Equality programme okayed for trans people

Building on prior attempts to deny the existence of trans people by forbidding them from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identities, legislatures in several countries focused on forbidding trans youth from accessing prescribed medical care and from participating in sports, the activist noted.

The laws could not prohibit transgender from accessing necessary medical care and playing certain sports.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2021.